Lab

Web-hosting packages

Owning and running your own website may seem to be an enormous undertaking, but you'd be surprised at how little effort it actually takes. Web-hosting companies make registering a domain (such as www.mywebsitename.co.uk) and setting up a hosting account child's play, and many provide handy tools to help you design your site.

A hosting package provides you with space on a server from which to run your website, a domain management service and a server to manage email. This month we've tested 15 shared web-hosting packages to find out which best suits your needs.

What to look for

Getting a website up and running requires more than just a hosting package; you also have to design and publish your site. How easy this is depends on your design knowledge and to what extent your hosting package will lend a hand. Some offer complete website creation tools, while others have support for FrontPage extensions, which means that you can design a website in Microsoft FrontPage and publish it directly to your hosting package from your desktop.

The content of your site will dictate how much space you need. Graphical websites with a large number of pages will occupy more space than those with mostly textual content, and will also consume your monthly bandwidth allowance faster. A website that contains a photo album with around 1,000 photos, for example, will require approximately 200MB.

All the hosting packages on test have some form of Control Panel from which you can create sub-domains, manage files, add scripts, build your site and administer email and FTP accounts. Although this doesn't directly affect how your hosting package works, it does dictate the ease with which you can administer your site.

All the packages here allow you to create email accounts for your domain. If you have a large organisation, it's important that your hosting package includes enough email addresses to cover this.

When technical problems occur, the level and competence of technical support is key. It was not possible for us to test this meaningfully, but if you require mission-critical reliability, we recommend that you look at internet forums for advice.

All the packages here support PHP, a scripting language used by many open-source internet applications. Around half the packages here offer dedicated database slots, while others offer them as added extras. Further scripting compatibility is often dictated by the host operating system.

Most services have transparent costs, but watch out for startup fees or domain registration charges. Our reviews say when these are not included in the price.